Go, Rabbit. Go!

The toddler is currently enthralled with a collection of the first three Raymond's Raving Rabbids games on the Wii.  The mini-games frequently ask the player to move his or her arms up and down to simulate running in a way the Wiimote can detect.  Owl prefers to move the remote and the nunchuk up and down by hopping in place.  It accomplishes the same job in a way that he finds more satisfactory and the rest of us find much cuter.

"No Raymond on Lesson Days!" or 3 Weeks With a Wii

We've had the Wii plugged in for three weeks now.  I hope this box can take heavy use, because with three children it's getting it.

Currently the two girls homeschooled for several hours a day on weekdays, while the 4yo gets a few minutes of lessons.  I allow video games before breakfast and after lessons.  In addition, the girls get two 20 minute "game breaks" one third and two thirds through their lessons to refresh their brains, although in practice they usually take one break around lunch.  The preschooler sleeps until around 10 in the morning and gets pulled off the console in the afternoon to play outside.  They're still undecided on if they'd rather watch TV or play video games at night.

The most obvious change can be seen in the mornings.  No more lazing about in bed for the girls.  The earlier they're up the longer they can play without the toddler.  Owl has limits on his playtime, but at 4 he's trying the "scream louder to get your way" stunt.  The fact that it hasn't worked so far hasn't deterred him yet.

I can see the appeal of mini-games.  In practice I've only got 15-20 minutes/day to play a game and gosh darn it, I'd like to see where I've made just a teeny tiny amount of actual progress in that time.  I've heard the appeal of immersive games is to "lose yourself" in them, but I'd have to "lose" the children first.

As for the games themselves we're currently playing Mario Kart Wii, Boom Blox Bash Party, Active Life Explorer, Just Dance Kids, and Raymond's Raving Rabbids Ultimate Party Collection.

Mario Kart is the children's favorite, especially for our truck-crazy 4yo.  It's fun and very well-designed.

Active Life Explorer is their second favorite.  It lets you be Indiana Jones.  Who doesn't want to be Indiana Jones?  You can really work up a sweat having fun stopping runaway trains and diving for treasure in this game.  I haven't tried it yet as my knee is acting up, but the children love it.  Unfortunately it works with the GameBoy ports and a special mat that can't be plugged into the latest model Wii, so the series it's a part of is going out of print, and the remaining games are selling for insane prices.  Even more unfortunately, it doesn't look like any more of the series will be made.  :(

Boom Box Bash Party is third on their list and first on mine.  The toddler just likes to throw bombs; but dh, the preteens, and I appreciate the intricate puzzles that many of the games present.

Just Dance Kids comes in a distant fourth for the children.  They like it more as a change of pace or a morning exercise program, although their interest has perked up after I showed them you can make playlists.  Yes, the scoring weights toward the arms, but with my knee acting up I can stand still and get a good upper body workout without my score tanking so I shan't complain about that aspect.

Raymond's Raving Rabbids is very fun is a gross, preteen sort of way; but you have to finish huge chunks of it before you can record any progress in your overall score.  For this reason it's confined to weekends when the girls can spend an uninterrupted hour or two with it.

The Wii has done a lot for promoting cooperative play amongst them, although Owl's patience wears thin on occasion.  We weren't able to play board games or card games without all the pieces being lost or destroyed, so this fills a huge gap in that regard.

Everything is Relative -- And Brighteyes Hates It

Brighteyes (13) is pretty cool with most of the world having relative values as long as math does not.  Math is where she goes for certainty.

Yesterday she found out algebra has statements with varying levels of truthfulness.  The resulting explosion was not pretty, and she wasn't happy the rest of the day.

We backed off on that topic.  She's buried herself in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for solace.  I've never met a bigger Mark Twain fan.

Changes are coming.

I'm not happy with the new layout, as I've lost the links in my sidebar.  It'll be a pain to rebuild those.  But the old format was no longer supported the way it used to be.

The Terror of Peace and Quiet

After a bumpy period my life is settled now.  There's no problems current or on the horizon, and everything is going just fine.  Objectively I know this based on the evidence around me.  Subjectively I know this because I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams.

Welcome to life with PTSD.

It's not really about nightmares, in spite of the popular mythology.  People who don't have this "coping strategy" usually don't understand it.  It's not a disease because it doesn't kill you.  At some point it saved your life.  If you have it, at some point in your past you feared for your life and/or safety, and PTSD sprang up to help you cope with your fear.  You were terrified, and you couldn't deal with your fears and do what you needed to do to survive at the same time.  PTSD put a time lag on your emotions.  As long as danger has your adrenaline up, you can't feel any emotions.  They're all safely locked away until the danger is past.  Once things calm down and your adrenaline falls, you get your emotions back.

All of them.

Especially the fears, terrors, anxieties, and angers.  They tend to swamp out everything else.

"Calm, peaceful, and quiet" is the most terrifying state I know.  Many with PTSD run from it.  I used to do that, but it only makes things worse if you don't allow yourself some peace and quiet Terror Time.

The real kicker is that I've been this way since I was a small child.  I was three when I got chronic depression.  The PTSD started a little later.  I don't know what it's like not to be this way.

No one knows how to turn it off.

Still, at least I know what it is now.  For 40 years I had it and didn't know what was causing these bizarre reactions.  That confusion and the fear my ignorance caused made things much worse.  These days I know the name, the shape, the pattern, and the cycles.  That helps.

The Banging and the Clanging of the Bells, Bells, Bells....

A lingering head cold has given me three straight days of tinnitus.  I'd rather have the head cold, thanks.

House Update, Autumnal Equinox, 2012

I've got a nasty cold that started yesterday.  I hate being sick on a holiday.

As the den nears completion, we've gone back to work on the sheds.  The lower one now has the inner walls in place.  The upper one is getting the extra insulation it needs.

The den now has the stairs, the floor, all the shelves and most of the trim.  The antenna is up, and we hung the TV on the wall and hooked up the antenna last week.  We now have access to two states' worth of public television signals (Mississippi and Alabama) and some junk.  Reception is intermittent, but we're still working out the optimal combination of position and equipment.

The toddler would watch PBS Kids all the time if he could, and we've had to start finding out-of-reach places to leave the remote.  The preteens are more laid-back about it, although the 11yo never misses a chance to watch anything that's on.  We're still mostly watching our DVDs and downloads, although Nova was a spectacular hit.

Today we hooked up the Wii for the first time, with Mario Kart, Boom Blox Bash Party, Just Dance For Kids, and four Wiimotes.  Thank Goddess I didn't start them off on any more complicated control system.  The toddler threw a temper tantrum whenever anyone tried to put on a non-racing game, and the 13yo threw a tantrum because she insisted on understanding everything inside and out before she made a single move.  She complained that her siblings were pushing buttons at random.  I pointed out that was a legitimate form of experimentation. The resulting explosion was not pretty.

Both girls sworn up and down they're going to get up extra early in the morning to master the Wii before the toddler wakes up.  We shall see.

Oh noes! Am I a good/bad woman by Republican standards? :P

Conservatives tend to have unwritten rulebooks that supercede what they say out loud.  But unwritten rules can contradict each other.  Case in point -- me.

For various reasons I'm currently homeschooling my children as a stay-at-home mom.  Traditionally conservatives have loved women who stayed home with their kids instead of getting jobs.  Traditionally they also favored homeschooling.  They think such women will vote for them.  So even though I'm an elitist Green Party Pagan snob and one of Santorum's "smart people (who) will never be on our side", their first inclination is to see me as a good person.

But because I am a stay-at-home mom, I don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes.

Oh noes!  Suddenly I and every other SAHM (including Ann Romney) are bad people!  We don't pay taxes!  We rely on handouts!  We'll never vote Republican or be invited to join the country club!   Unless of course our husband owns the damn club....

And I'm bad because, since I'm not paying federal income taxes, I'm not taking personal responsibility for myself!  Because I'm doing frivolous things instead like -- taking personal responsibility for my children's education?

So good woman, bad woman, which am I by Republican standards based on my occupation?  I don't personally care, but it shows how seriously Romney is out of touch even with his own party, let alone the country as a whole.

And to the senior citizens I heard today who said, "He didn't really mean us," yes he did.  And the disabled, the veterans, the students, and the soldiers as well as the domestic partners.  He really did mean us all.

"I'm Dreaming of a White President" - Randy Newman

Randy Newman's latest satirical song contains more truth than most of us would like to admit.  Why else would poor people support a man who dismisses them as part of the 47% who aren't "real" Americans?

Hurricane scale note

Isaac is still in the Gulf headed for the Mississippi/Louisianna border.  It's hours from landfall.   We live on the opposite side of the state, on the Mississippi/Alabama border.  We're already getting bands of rainfall from the storm.

Last Night I Dreamed of Frankensteins

Three madmen labored in adjacent cubicles to assemble giant monsters out of piles of rotting garbage that had long ago outlived their usefullness.  When they were satisfied with their work, each zapped them with fire, trying to bring the worn-out dead parts into some semblance of wholeness and life.  All they accomplished was to scorch their stack.  The garbage piles weren't dangerous, unless they fell on you or set fire to you.  But the madmen who believed they could breathe new life into these dead things were very dangerous as they sought more extreme ways to reanimate what should have been allowed to decay in peace, cannabalizing anything they could find for their project.

I woke up and decided I was watching way too much Republican election coverage.

House Update, A New TV, and An Anniversary August 27, 2011

We finished the ceiling trim and the middle ribs, the latter a necessity in a room that has walls made of tongue-and-groove paneling, bead board, sheetrock, and plywood.  That's one of the reasons we chose a rustic "Western" theme for the room, that and the need to find something playfull enough for the children and palatable for grownups.

We've installed 22 shelves, including a video game case, a Doctor Who book-and-DVD case, and extra wide top shelves for puppets and stuffed animals.  There's also another 16 shelves in the pantry we built.  There's another DVD case to come, but it's far enough away from where the TV will sit that we shouldn't have to worry about the TV being damaged.

We tried to buy some linoleum at Lowe's but even though they've previously delivered the next day for free, now they want $79 to deliver in two weeks -- maybe.  We found an indie hardware store that sold us a better product $80 cheaper and was willing to deliver the next day for $15.  Guess who got our money?  But with all the extra running around it won't be installed until this week.

The TV arrived Saturday, our first new one since 1996, which means the first new one the children have ever seen, and our first flatscreen.  It's a mid-size LG, according to the reviews not considered good enough for those used to high quality HGTV, but we're not and our jaws dropped just fine.  It's currently screwed into the carpet in the living room, waiting for us to build it a proper base in the den.

My husband was concerned about the fragility of the screen, and had me prop it up under the edges with hardcovers.  "Now make a barricade of books around it to keep the children from getting close."

I raised an eyebrow.  "If I build a book fort, they're going to play in it."

"Oh, right.  That's out.  Can we put up an electrified fence?"

We got out our old DVD player and hooked up it.  It had a Clannad CD in it, the same one I'd been playing the day before the worst of the burgularies, when we realized the best locks we could buy would no longer work.  I flashed back to that night when we packed up the children and what little a theif might value, and fled the house right before the predawn light.

Clannad began to play.  My husband looked up.  "It's working!"

I grinned.  "You bought me a really big tape deck."

He grinned back.  "And a really expensive one, too!"

We got out My Neighbor Totoro.  The first break-in had been a few days before Owl's second birthday.  Here we were, a few days before Owl's fourth birthday.  It was the first time in two years that we had had the opportunity to sit down in our own house to watch our own TV and feel safe while doing in.  As we oohed and aahed over the picture, I may have shed a few tears.

Later, as Owl lined up flowers from the back yard on the table and we installed yet another shelf, my husband asked.  "Was that nice?"

"Uh, no.  Not exactly."

"Hmm?  Was it fun?"

"No.  It was -- cathartic."

He was silent for a while, then said, "Yeah, me too."

August Weather

Southern summers are always hot, but August heat is in a class by itself.  In theory after the summer solstice the heat of the sun begins to diminish, but no one notices because there's a hot new player on the scene.  After months of constant heating, the Earth itself has begun to radiate heat.  Now instead of heat just raining down on us from above, it boils up from the ground at the same time, catching us in a fiery pincer.  The air is stifling.  Air conditioners strain.  Breathing is difficult.  Sleep is impossible.  The short reprieve granted by a rare rainstorm turns into a hot, humid sauna as soon as the rain ends.

But now a gentle breeze blows, dispelling the stale heat.  Mild rains break up the heat, and afterwards the gentle breeze still blows, keeping the air from heating unbearably.  It can only mean one thing.

There's a hurricane in the Gulf headed right for us.

Time Flies

It's our 24th wedding anniversary.  Yay us.  :)

House Update August 12, 2012

The den is starting to look less like a jumble of other people's abandoned projects and more cohesive.  The pantry is functional and stocked, which means the canned food is no longer in banana boxes scattered over the den floor.  It needs the door installed and some touch-up work, but it will do for now.

The insides of the cabinets and the counter-tops are painted, and the counter-tops are installed.  We're almost finished with the ceiling trim.  We've begun putting up the side trim and the shelf brackets, including some curlicue brackets my husband cut out of scrap.

To-finish:  the trim, and the shelves.

To-do:  clean up, paint, and install the recycled cabinet doors and drawers; install linoleum; and decide how to install the TV.

Most Important Job:  get some sleep!

House Update July 31, 2012

 All other work is pretty much suspended as we race to finish the den. The deadline for having the walls finished, the floor laid down, and the TV installed (not to mention the futon carried down) is August 27, the start of the Republican National Convention, thus providing (hopefully) conclusive evidence on the raging debate in our house, "Is the Republican campaign strategy more motivated by cynical manipulation or by blind arrogance?"

We lost three days due to paint already. Lowe's house brand, Valspar, has worked for us so far, but when we tried to paint the trim a dark color ("La Fonda Earth" aka melted chocolate) the paint came out thinner than milk, ran everywhere, and stained everything. What should have been a one-day job turned into a four-day job, and ruined any chance of us buying more Valspar paint. The trim that hasn't been installed yet will be painted beforehand, and we're reconsidering painting some of the installed trim.

 Instead of building walls for the pantry and then adding shelves to the walls, we built extra-sturdy floor to ceiling shelves whose extra-thick backs form the "walls". After much searching, we finally found someone who would sell us a skinny door for the pantry; for a while we thought we'd have to make one. We finished the cabinet facings at 2 am.

Next up is the pantry door frame, then the pantry walls, the cabinet drawers and doors, the upper shelves, the book and DVD shelves, the trim, the paint, and deciding what to build for the TV: table, shelf, or frame? Then the flooring, the TV installation, and we're done. Knock on wood.

Discovering Smoothies

I finally got everything together to make yogurt. Since the new kitchen is bigger than a postage stamp we now have a blender for the first time in 15 years, which means we can make smoothies. I haven't had very many smoothies, as there's been a lack of: a) smoothie bars in the area, b) money, and c) blenders, so I'm only vaguely acquainted with the process. Blending the fruit to a pulp before serving fruit yogurt seems to help most of the family eat it faster, although the two youngest children are resisting. So far I've experimented with fresh blueberries from the neighbor's garden, leftover sauteed apples, bananas, cantaloupe, and fresh peaches. So far so good, although there's still some pulp left over; it doesn't blend smooth. Oh, and grapes. I found if I add a handful of white grapes I don't need any sugar even with the tart yogurt.

I'm not sure how exactly I'm supposed to get it really cold. The recipes say, "Throw ice, fruit, and liquid into the blender and blend it smooth." That doesn't work. If I blend it at the top speed to pulverize the fruit pulp, the ice is crushed to nothing. If I don't blend it at top speed, I end up with a lot of pulp. Obviously I have to add the ice later. Apparently some people prefer frozen fruit, both because it's colder and because the ice crystals break down the pulp in the freezer. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't do anything about melons (which shouldn't be frozen) or grape skins.

Hmm. I'm told smoothies call for three main ingredients: liquid (to protect the blades), ice, and smooth-blending fruit. Obviously some people are doubling up with the frozen fruit. If I use yogurt for the liquid I don't need liquid fruit juice. What if I freeze the fruit juice and use that for the ice? I know lemonade freezes at a lower temperature than water; I bet it's true of fruit juices as well. I'll try that. I'll also try adding some chocolate milk powder to the smoothies of the two youngest children. That might improve their opinion, as they belong to the "everything is better with chocolate" camp.

Life, With (Optional) Video Games

It's so hot I've largely ceded the computer to my children for gaming, but that and the fact that we should have the Wii hooked up in another month* have me thinking quite a bit about computer games: my own past with them, what my children think of them, and how they'll fit in our homeschooling household.

(*The target date for finishing the den and installing a TV is the Republican primary.  My husband wants to see just how much they think they can get away with up close.)

I loved computer games in the 1970s and 1980s but my coordination is lousy, and it was even worse as a teenager.  I could handle the "shoot" button, although I'd never be a high scorer.  Then Nintendo invented the "jump" button, and I washed out of arcade-style games.

That left PC puzzle games which I preferred, up to a point.  The entire trajectory of my life as a abuse survivor had been about realizing I don't have to do what other people want me to do.  It's served me well in general, but not in puzzle gaming.  I'd get stuck in a game and think, "Why am I expending all this energy pleasing someone who isn't even here?  This is not who I am.  This is not what I do."  At that point it was easy to walk away.  I still liked the concept of computer games though, and I got excited over the developments of RPGs and motion controls.

Our children have no such hangups, and enjoy playing PC games.  When we moved into a bigger house and prepared to get an up-to-date TV it only made sense to pick up a Wii.  Now I'm wondering how I can incorporate this console into our homeschool.

Turns our other people are wondering the same thing.  New Mexico University has an entire department researching how to integrate games in education, especially exercise games.  They summarized their findings in a video, the presentation drags but it has some useful ideas.



And since schoolteachers put everything online, it didn't take long to find free exergame lesson plans.

Indoor exercising in the only way to go in this heat, that's for sure.  And it might be a good idea to keep a dance game pulled up for between-lesson breaks to help "get the sillies out."

The temperature is finally staying below 100F most days, but the rains have  moved in.  While this is good for the garden, the air is so super-saturated with moisture that the air conditioning can't remove the water.  The air flowing from it just blows on the sweat on your body, but it doesn't remove it.  We're going outside as little as possible during daylight.

House Update July 2012

I haven't posted much lately largely because I've been tired out from remodeling.  (Dh just told me to write, "My husband has the summer off, so no one got a vacation."  It's true.  Last-minute Pell Grant "reforms" killed over 2/3rds of the summer school classes and left him little to do but carpentry.)  It's been over 105F for two weeks now, so we're doing a lot of the outdoor prep work between 9pm and midnight.  Here's what we've finished since the last house update in January.



Kitchen

The electrical outlets have been refurbished.  The facings of the upper cabinets are complete except for the decorative bit and the tricky bit.  The paint's been retouched.  The vent hood is installed, so now we can fry food for the first time in almost 2 years.  The drawer slides are here and hopefully we can get on to making the drawers soon.  I need a safe place to store my candy thermometer so I can make homemade yogurt. It's too hot for anything but a cold breakfast, cornflakes get old fast, and it's even too hot for homemade baked goods first thing in the morning.

(Have you seen what yogurt costs in the stores?  Yeah.)

Den

My husband has taken great delight in turning the gloomy former mancave into a sunny playroom.  ("Mancaves are for pathetic losers who can't do anything.")  We finished priming the walls and painted the ceiling.  Extra outlets were added.  The pantry floor is in place right over what was apparently once the garage shed, and the framing has begun.  The built-in cabinets are framed, floored, and have their sub-counters on.  We saved the doors and drawers from the former kitchen lower cabinets, scrubbed them out good, and we'll recycle them here.  Still, the cost of the lumber to finish the room was the biggest expense after the mortgage this month.

I'm slightly annoyed by the work, as I use the den to exercise in and all the commotion has thrown my schedule off.  The 12yo is extremely annoyed that we haven't made the den a priority since we're going to wait until it's finished to buy a new TV (our first since 1995, and our first flat screen) and set up the Wii we got last Christmas.  I pointed out that the delay has given us time to round up extra games, remotes, nunchucks, and a charger, but that only placates her so much.

We haven't been able to buy anything else for the new house or to bring anything large down from the old house, except for a bookcase full of baby and children's books that is now in the girls' room.  They were happy to become reacquainted with old favorites and to introduce them to the 3yo.

The sheds

Much of the outdoor work has been spent finishing one shed and refinishing another.  One shed was left unfinished over a decade ago.  The material to build it was piled behind it and left to weather outdoors for at least 12 years.  Only one wall was completely finished; it held a warped but intact set of 1950's knotted pine upper kitchen cabinets taken from a neighbor's house during their remodeling.   We finished the outer facing, the wiring, the insulation, and the inner facing.

The other shed looked like it had been set up at one time for children's crafts, probably during the house's "day care" era.  It had since been turned into a storage building for at least one other damaged set of upper kitchen cabinets (and possibly part of another set), some lower cabinets, and a huge pile of interior finishing remnants at least 12-15 years old that don't match anything we've seen in the house.   We've cleaned and sorted it out,  The damaged sheetrock was chopped up for Predator bandages flat casting molds. The walls are being prepped so we can install the upper cabinets and return it to it's former function.  If necessary we can run pipes out to it and turn it  into a cabin, should we find ourselves needing to house extra adults in a few years.  We've also scraped the carpet off the ceiling (a 70s fad) and painted it.

The gardens

Last  year's site for the vegetable patch turned out to be a bog, so we're trying a dryer place this year.  Of course that means we're having a drought.  Still, the site has been a good one.  We're just growing enough to eat fresh this year.  We don't have time to can anything.

The flower beds are doing good.  The 11yo likes to birdwatch, so I've pitched the flowers towards butterflies, hummingbirds, and birds, with a lot of red and pinky-purple wildflowers all arranged in drifts according to height, just like they would be found in Nature, provided Nature had the aesthetics of a school photographer.  It's produced a bumper crop of butterflies and dragonflies, and one tiny hummingbird.  The bird feeders we cleaned up and set out, and the bluebird houses the girls made, have also brought us bluebirds and cardinals to watch.

One odd bit came from a cheap bag of "daffodils" we planted out last fall that turned out  to be giant ornamental alliums instead, a much more expensive plant that I never had any fondness for.  (I love to look at alliums while thinking how good they'll taste on my plate.)  Still, we've got them and the butterflies like them, so I'll find a place for them in the back row this fall.

The azaleas are on Year 2 of a 3-year plan to prune them into shape.  They can only be pruned by 1/3 at a time, and they started out as monsters threatening to eat the house.  This year I've got them down to the right height, but they're still spread out everywhere.  I've also started pruning the rest of the shrubs this year.

The floirbunda rose we planted last year did well, so this year it was joined by 15 David Austens:  Harlow Carrs, Braithwaites, a Sharifa Ousma, and a Scentimental.  The Scenitmental and one of the Carrs died, but the rest are doing fine.

We also planted a pear tree and a Japanese persimmon this year.  The persimmon had been sitting in it's pot for two years when we bought it, and had naturally acquired a "bonsai look".  It's doing fine and has even set fruit.

The herb garden has long since outgrown it's spot by the kitchen door and spread out in all directions.   Depending on how you count them, I've now got between 30 and 60 different varieties, including 9 different mints, 6 or 7 different thymes, and IDK how many different dianthus and bee balm.  The regular lemon balm I planted last year is now "golden leaf" lemon balm, which doesn't seem to take the sun as well unfortunately.

While pineapple sage loves my yard, regular sage doesn't.  I've planted three different varieties so far, and two have already died.  Grey-leaved plants don't take to the South, so I'm currently trying a gold variegated sage to see if that will do better.  I wish someone would make a green or golden leaved lavender that would do well down here.

Everything else is doing well, by which I currently mean "hanging in there in spite of the heat".

Mishaps

The people who had this house before us knew a lot about wiring and about heating/cooling installations, but not so much about plumbing.  One problem took out the entire front half of the house (including the laundry and kitchen).  The plumber took one look at it and disappeared for three weeks.  After three weeks of doing dishes and laundry in the bathtub I called him up and fussed at him because I'd had to cancel a talk I was supposed to give at (the UU) church.  He came out to fix them the next morning.  No service provider can afford to be bad-mouthed at church.

Immediately after that the bathroom sink stopped up, and while trying to fix it we found that the house had extra pipes for nonexistent rooms that had never been properly capped -- when it started raining inside the house.

In between those two mishaps the stove element blew, and in the process took out the rest of the wiring in the stove.  (Remind me why we need a computer in a simple appliance.)  After a week of trying to fix it we realized that the cost of all the new parts we needed exceeded the cost of a new stove, and replaced it.

The good news is that it looks like we're about to get a break in the weather.  The forecast is saying that we'll have a big storm next week which will knock the highs down to 95F, which is currently the temperature at midnight.  It's due to arrive on Thursday, the same day the lumber gets here.